Hillsborough football stadium disaster: a fight for justice and wounds that never heal

Twenty years after the Hillsborough football stadium disaster, questions
remain unanswered and, for the families of the 96 Liverpool fans who died,
justice has yet to be done.

Liverpool fans climb the terraces in a desperate bid to escape the crushPhoto: PA

By Phil Scraton

8:00AM GMT 27 Mar 2009

Stephanie Jones travelled to Sheffield the night before the game to stay with her brother, Richard, and his girlfriend, Tracey, both at Sheffield University. On the Saturday afternoon Doreen, Stephanie and Richard's mother, visited her father at his home. 'I was in the back kitchen but my father shouted to me to tell me there was trouble at Hillsborough.' Doreen rushed to watch on the television. 'I saw people lying on the pitch and people coming over the fence. For somebody who is very calm in herself, I started to panic, shouting, "My three are in there." I started to cry.'

Doreen rang her husband, Les, who was also watching the coverage at work, 'already aware that there were deaths in the crowd'.

Some time before 5pm Stephanie rang from Sheffield. She was in tears because she had lost contact with Richard, 25, and Tracey, 23, at the ground. Helped by another fan, she had returned to their car and a local woman had taken her into her house to use the phone. 'She said she'd hurt her ribs, hurt her arm,' Doreen said. 'I told her to go back to the ground and tell the police what she had told me. We told her we were leaving right away for Sheffield.' As they set off, Les felt sure that Richard was seriously hurt.

The FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool andNottingham Forest on April 15, 1989, was one of the highest-profile domestic football games of the season. By any standards, policing Hillsborough was a massive operation. The 1,122 officers on duty comprised approximately 38 per cent of the entire South Yorkshire force.

In 1989 Hillsborough, the home of Sheffield Wednesday, was typical of many First Division grounds. Built a century earlier, it stood two miles out of Sheffield's city centre, alongside the River Don. The east end, the Spion Kop, was a modern standing terrace holding 21,000, allocated to Nottingham fans. The west end, the decrepit Leppings Lane terrace, was allocated to Liverpool supporters.

Access to the Leppings Lane turnstiles was tight. Gates in the fencing led into confined areas feeding 23 old-style turnstiles, with exit gates nearby. The turnstiles processed fans entering the Leppings Lane terrace, the West Stand and the North Stand: more than 24,256. Three years earlier a police inspector had warned that the Leppings Lane turnstiles 'do not give anything like the access to the ground… needed by away fans'.

A beautiful spring day added to the carnival atmosphere. Many fans were led to the ground by police, who met them from trains and buses. But close to the ground there was no filtering of the crowd by the police. The bottleneck at the turnstiles became tightly packed and the mood changed. With walls, fences or gates to the sides and front the only relief was behind, but more and more fans arrived, oblivious to the mounting crush at the front.

As kick-off approached, the crush became desperate, the situation critical, as men, women, children and police officers struggled to breathe. In later testimonies police officers talked of the crowd growing 'unruly', 'nasty' and 'violent'. Those in the crush gave a considerably different account. They commented that there was no attempt to manage the crowd, no filtering and no queuing: 'It stands to sense that if you have people trying to find their turnstiles in a narrow space which leads to different parts of the ground you need a filtering system further back.'

Hillsborough's police control box was inside the ground, elevated above the Leppings Lane terrace, giving a commanding view of the crowd below.

Around 2.30pm the CCTV monitors showed the sudden build-up of fans in Leppings Lane and at the turnstiles. Chief Supt David Duckenfield, the match commander, had virtually no experience of policing football. He had taken over from his predecessor only three weeks before the game. Now he faced a serious dilemma.

The senior officer outside the ground told him that unless he opened the large exit gates, there would be serious injuries, possibly deaths. After some hesitation Duckenfield gave the command: 'Open the gates.

'Gate C was close to the turnstiles and fans walked through. 'We were just hanging back waiting for the crowd to thin out and the big blue gate opened,' one fan said. 'They called us through and we went. I had my ticket out but no one was interested. I thought, "Great, we're in," and walked straight down the tunnel in front of us.'

Directly opposite Gate C was the entrance to a tunnel under the West Stand. It was signed standing. More than 2,000 fans walked down the 1-in-6 gradient into the already packed central pens. There was no way out to the sides or the front and no way back up the tunnel.

'I don't remember seeing any stewards,' another fan said. 'We went down the tunnel and into the area right of the fence. It was really packed.' The central pens now held twice their capacity.

As the teams came out on to the pitch, the crowd was excited, cheering the names of the players. But in central pens 3 and 4 people were screaming. Others fell silent, unconscious. 'I couldn't believe what was going on. No one could move, not an inch. People around me were contorted in whatever position they'd been compressed. Heads were locked between arms and shoulders, the faces gasping in panic.'

'I was bent forward, from the waist, my full weight pressing down on people in front of me. At first the pain in my back was sharp but then it was in my chest. Suddenly, I knew I was going to die.'

In pen 3 the pressure was so great that the fans at the front were squashed into the perimeter fencing, their faces distorted by the mesh. 'I realised that the guy next to me was dead, his eyes were bulging and his tongue out. It was sheer horror.'

'I saw a young boy go down and knew that was it for him. He went under people's feet but no one could do anything about it. The pressure was so great.' Fans screamed at the police on the perimeter track to open the small evacuation gates on to the pitch, 'but they just seemed transfixed. They did nothing.' As fans tried to climb the overhanging perimeter fence, officers on the track pushed them back into the crowd.

In the police control box, Duckenfield and his colleagues had a perfect view of the central pens. Having opened the exit gate, he had failed to seal off the tunnel. Later, he stated his confidence that officers 'were patrolling the concourse area' and, acting 'on their own initiative… would have taken some action in the tunnel.'

From the control box Duckenfield saw fans trying to climb out of the pens. It did not strike him, he said later, that they were trying to escape a crush. Then he saw a perimeter gate open, apparently without authority.

'My perception is… it was a pitch invasion.' This was the message radioed to officers around the ground as they rushed to the Leppings Lane perimeter track. They thought they were dealing with crowd disorder. Duckenfield and his senior officers failed to anticipate disaster. The collective mindset was hooliganism.

Throughout the previous two decades 'football hooliganism' featured regularly in political debates. This led directly to the strategy of policing by segregation and containment. The 1977 McElhone Report on football crowd behaviour recommended lateral fences within terraces to prevent sideways movement. Perimeter fencing, high and overhanging, should be 'not less than 1.8m in height', designed to make access to the pitch impossible. Terraces were divided into pens – as many as six pens behind the goal.

The South Yorkshire police 'operational order' for the semi-final identified drunkenness as a priority. Much of the policing outside the ground, from random coach searches through to the monitoring of pubs, was supposed to be directed against drinking. What the operational order failed to address was as striking as its priorities. There were no contingencies for the inevitable build-up outside the ground immediately before kick-off. There was nothing about the bottleneck at the Leppings Lane turnstiles. There were no contingency plans for coping with over-full pens or for closing the tunnel leading into the central pens. Committed to containment, it neglected safety.

As the officers arrived at the perimeter fence thefull realisation of the situation was immediately apparent. 'This was not a pitch invasion,' one officer said later. 'There were a large number of dead, dying and injured persons in the crowd. Some crushed against the fence were blue violet in colour, others had glazed eyes, apparently dead, others were covered in vomit.'

Another officer saw a young boy close to the front of pen 3. 'He was still alive and had his fingers on the steel mesh. He was turning purple and looking straight into my eyes. I was totally helpless and could not reach [him]. I jumped down… and attempted to push my hands through the metal fence to pull him clear. It was futile. I spoke to him and told him to hang on and held his hands.'

Not long after 3.15pm, after the match had been abandoned, Duckenfield told representatives of the Football Association, including the chief executive, Graham Kelly, that Liverpool fans had forced Gate C, causing an inrush into the stadium, down the tunnel, into the backs of those already in the central pens. Duckenfield stated later that, 'The blunt truth [was] that we had been asked to open a gate. I was not being deceitful… we were all in a state of shock.' He continued, 'I just thought at that stage that I should not communicate fully the situation… I may have misled Mr Kelly.' He did.

Kelly unwittingly and in good faith repeated Duckenfield's lie to the waiting media. Within minutes it was broadcast around the world: an appalling disaster was happening, and Liverpool fans were to blame.

The medical assistance officially on call atHillsborough was provided by 30 St John Ambulance officers, five of whom were young cadets. As fans were pulled from the pens through the two narrow perimeter track gates they were laid out close by. As bodies multiplied there was congestion on the pitch.

It was clear that those dying had suffered asphyxiation and needed proper medical care. To get them to hospital it was necessary to carry them the length of the pitch where they could be transferred to ambulances. Realising the urgent need for paramedical attention and hospital treatment, fans tore down advertising hoardings to use as makeshift stretchers. Bodies were placed on the hoardings and, running, fans carried them to the other end of the pitch. When they got there they were directed to lay people down in the club gymnasium.

By 3.45pm a doctor who had been treating people on the pitch was asked by a senior police officer to go to the gymnasium to examine bodies and certify death. On arriving in the gymnasium he found four or five rows of bodies and, with a GP, began examining them: 'We were accompanied by a police officer who made a note of every body… I performed a normal examination on each body and pronounced life extinct in turn.' In an estimated 25 minutes, he examined and certified 20 bodies.

Each body was given a number, put in a bodybag and allocated a police officer, who wiped the face with a sponge or rag. Polaroid photographs were taken, numbered and posted on a board close to the entrance of the gymnasium.

Doreen and Les Jones arrived in Sheffield late in the evening. Relatives were held at a disused boys' club and bused to the ground. At about 2.15am, a police officer announced that they 'were being taken to the ground to look at some photographs'. Doreen shouted out, 'Why? What are we going to look at photographs for? Why aren't we being taken to a hospital?'

She continued, 'He knew what the photographs were and I suppose I did… but I didn't know what was going on, possibly I didn't want to accept what was going on.'

Once at the ground, they were shown the full horror of the gymnasium. Surrounded by gym equipment, and what looked like 'curtains hanging', they watched 'a guy standing there punching a brick wall… people screaming and God knows what… nobody even taking a blind bit of notice.'

Les then saw the photographs, 'pinned on to the divider… any old way'. Doreen said, 'They were only small Polaroids and we seemed to go along loads of them. And then Les pointed out Richard without telling anybody that it was Richard… And then he said he couldn't find Trace. I said this was Trace… Les didn't recognise her at first.'

They were taken through a door, 'and they brought us two trolleys together, pulled one out – unzipped it, just showed you the head and you just said, "Yes" and they pulled the next one forward.' Doreen bent down, 'to cuddle Richard', but she never made it. 'I don't know who it was but… they hawked me up and told Les that they [the bodies] were the property of the coroner and we couldn't touch him.'

Of the 96 Liverpool supporters who eventually died, only 14 made it to hospital and, of those, 12 were pronounced 'dead on arrival'.

Extensive press coverage the following morningcarried explicit, close-up photographs and graphic descriptions of the dead and injured. Media coverage rushed to judgment, and unqualified blame was directed against Liverpool fans.

Police sources and a local MP continued to allege that Liverpool fans were drunk and violent, attacked rescue workers, urinated on police officers while abusing and stealing from the dead. This led to the Sun's infamous front page three days after the disaster: 'THE TRUTH: some fans picked pockets of victims; some fans urinated on the brave cops; some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life'. Eight newspapers carried the allegations, consolidated by senior police officers in 'off-the-record' briefings. Consequently, Hillsborough became synonymous with soccer-related violence and hooliganism.

In the immediate aftermath Lord Justice Taylor was appointed to 'inquire into the events at Sheffield Wednesday football ground on April 15, 1989, and to make recommendations about the needs of crowd control and safety at sports events.' On May 15, a month after the disaster, at Sheffield's town hall, the Taylor Inquiry hearings opened. The West Midlands police investigation had been gathering evidence since April 24 – 2,666 phone calls were evaluated by West Midlands officers, who eventually took 3,776 statements.

On August 1, 1989, less than four months after the disaster, Taylor published his interim report. For those expecting the South Yorkshire police to be vindicated, his findings were stunning. He established that the immediate cause of the disaster was the police failure to cut off access to the central pens once Gate C had been opened. Effectively, this caused the overcrowding which, in turn, caused the deaths and injuries. Lack of leadership, together with the restricted size and small number of perimeter fence gates, hampered the rescue.

Taylor considered that the dangerous congestion at the turnstiles should have been anticipated. While accepting that there was a minority of fans the worse for drink, Taylor found that 'hooliganism' played no part in the disaster. Yet, the 'fear of hooliganism' led to an undue 'influence on the strategy of the police' creating an 'imbalance between the need to quell a minority of troublemakers and the need to secure the safety and comfort of the majority'. The 'real cause' of the disaster 'was overcrowding'; the 'main reason… was the failure of police control'.

Taylor went on to castigate senior officers. He was emphatic that once Duckenfield acceded to the request to open Gate C, the tunnel should have been closed. Worse still, Duckenfield 'gave Mr Kelly and others to think that there had been an inrush due to fans forcing open a gate.' Taylor continued, 'This was not only untruthful', but 'set off a widely reported allegation against the supporters which caused grave offence and distress.'

Taylor concluded that Duckenfield had failed 'to take effective control of the disaster situation. He froze.' He also recognised that there had been a police-led campaign of vilification against Liverpool fans. Listing the allegations published in the Sun he concluded, 'not a single witness' supported any of them.

At the end of November 1989 the South Yorkshire Chief Constable, Peter Wright, and his Police Authority offered 'to open negotiations with the aim of resolving all bona fide claims against him for compensation arising out of the Hillsborough disaster.'

Eventually, over several years, out-of-court settlements led to compensation payments. By early 1998 there had been 36 settlements for loss of financial dependency, 50 fatal claims (restricted to funeral expenses and/or statutory bereavement payments) and 1,035 personal injury claims.

Yet families sought answers to the specific circumstances of the deaths of their loved ones. The failure to identify and respond to the protracted crush in the pens coupled with the lack of immediate medical aid to the dying raised serious questions over whether more lives could have been saved. That resuscitation was successful in some cases, that some placed with the dead actually recovered, left lingering doubts about the adequacy of much of the spontaneous treatment.

Added to this, cursory examinations, often no more than feeling for a pulse, were conducted in the heat of the moment by inexperienced, non- medical people. With certainty of death often so difficult to establish in asphyxiated victims, the deeply disturbing possibility remained: that some people were taken into the gymnasium, laid out on the floor, their faces covered by clothes and bin-liners, solely on the assumption of death.

There was an expectation within the families' lawyers that specific circumstances, particularly relating to appropriate medical care and attention, would be unveiled and cross-examined at the inquests. Between November 1990 and March 28, 1991, the inquests took place at Sheffield's town hall. Evidence was heard from 230 witnesses, and were the longest inquests in history.

On the evening of the disaster, the coroner, Dr Stefan Popper, took the unprecedented decision to record the blood alcohol levels of all who died, including children. This was portrayed as further confirmation that drunkenness was a primary cause. It implied that fans had contributed to their own deaths and to the deaths of others.

At the inquests Popper announced that while evidence would be extensive, there would be no consideration of events after 3.15pm on April 15. He reflected that the 'damage that caused [each] death was due to crushing', that 'each individual death' was 'in exactly the same situation', that once 'real damage' had occurred, each individual was beyond help or rescue. In other words, all of those who died would have received fatal injuries by 3.15. He concluded: 'The fact that the person may survive an injury for a number of… hours or even days, is not the question which I as a coroner have to consider.'

The only conclusion to be drawn from Popper's ruling was that those who died did so regardless of medical attention received or denied. Equally, by this logic, those who lived did so regardless of medical attention.

Within days a tide of allegations accompanied the inquests. Again the newspapers had a field day, as fans were portrayed as drunk and violent. The police again claimed it had been an orchestrated attempt to create mayhem outside the ground to force mass entry. Officers spoke of the 'unruly' behaviour of fans, their unacceptable and insulting responses, and their wilful rejection of reasonable police requests.

A typical police statement concluded, 'the overall demeanour of the crowd was… quite evil'. One officer had 'never seen [such] a quantity of a crowd in possession of drink'; another considered it was 'as if everyone had delayed the time that they were coming to the ground and all decided to come later.'

Lord Justice Taylor had already rejected these allegations yet his findings were now in question. Survivors were cross-examined at the inquests by multiple lawyers representing different police interests and working as a team, coordinating cross-examination. This was in marked contrast to the cross-examination of police witnesses when one barrister represented the interests of 43 families.

Survivors who gave evidence felt they were blamed for the disaster, that they were 'on trial'. 'They didn't know what I'd been through,' one said. 'I'd lost someone dear to me, fought to survive and others died around me. People died before my eyes and no one helped. It was chaos and I know some could have been saved. They didn't want to know at the inquest. No questions about the first aid on the pitch, about carrying people on hoardings, about the police in the gymnasium. They didn't want to know.'

On March 28, 1991, after a long deliberation the jury reached a majority verdict on all who died at Hillsborough: 'accidental death'. Bereaved families, survivors and witnesses, exhausted from the months of travelling, listening and waiting, broke down and cried.

The optimism following the Taylor Report had evaporated. The Director of Public Prosecutions had already ruled out private prosecutions against the police. Eddie Spearritt, who survived the disaster while his 14-year-old son Adam died, commented, 'It was as if every door was closing on us. To tell the truth I didn't expect anything else. It was too big an issue, too many top people, too much to lose.'

Yet, the families' tenacious campaign for justicecontinued, individually and collectively. Anne Williams, whose son Kevin died at Hillsborough, has campaigned for two decades following disclosure that a Special Police Constable suggested Kevin was alive at 4pm and had mumbled, 'Mum'. Another officer stated that after 3.15pm, while attempting to resuscitate Kevin on the pitch, he located a pulse and Kevin convulsed. As Anne Williams has argued consistently and tirelessly, the case for due consideration of the evidence and medical opinions concerning Kevin's death was, and remains, compelling. Having exhausted all domestic legal remedies, her case was submitted to the European Court of Human Rights on August 12, 2006. She is still awaiting a response.

After more than a decade, a private prosecution brought by the families against Duckenfield and his assistant, Bernard Murray, finally came to court in 2000. The fact that the trial lasted seven weeks seemed to show there was a case to answer. Yet the trial judge's direction of the jury, the failure to reach a verdict on Duckenfield and the acquittal of Murray brought dismay.

Families felt that, in directing that a guilty verdict would send the 'wrong message… to those who have to act in an emergency of this kind', the judge confused the actual circumstances of the case against the officers with broader policy implications of a guilty verdict.

Given that the jury requested guidance from the judge, Doreen Jones considers his comments 'daunting and seemingly impossible to overcome'. Peter Joynes, whose 27-year-old son Nick died at Hillsborough, remains astounded that, 'given all the evidence, it's impossible to believe or bear' that '20 years on no one is held responsible for one of sport's biggest disasters'.

The campaign on Merseyside against the Sun and its former editor Kelvin MacKenzie continues. In July 2004, after securing an interview with Liverpool-born Wayne Rooney, at the time an Everton player, the Sun published an editorial stating that its coverage of Hillsborough had been the 'most terrible mistake in its history'.

Indeed, soon after the disaster the Press Council described the Sun's front page as 'insensitive, provocative and unwarranted'. The newspaper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, was contrite – the coverage had been 'uncaring and deeply offensive to relatives of the victims'. On radio MacKenzie accepted that 'with hindsight… most of the newspaper coverage of Hillsborough had been a mistake.' It was assumed that MacKenzie had been instructed by Murdoch to make a statement as the Sun had lost nearly 40 per cent of its regional circulation, which has never recovered. In November 2006, speaking at a business lunch in Newcastle, MacKenzie reportedly stated, 'All I did wrong there was tell the truth. There was a surge of Liverpool fans who had been drinking and that is what caused the disaster. I went on World at One the next day and apologised. I only did that because Rupert Murdoch told me to. I wasn't sorry then and I'm not sorry now.'

On January 7, 2007, Liverpool played Arsenal in an FA Cup game at Anfield. The BBC broadcast the game at peak viewing time. Agreed by the club, the Liverpool fans' group Reclaim the Kop organised a protest directed at MacKenzie and the BBC for employing him as a presenter. At the kick-off the entire Kop, approximately 12,000 fans, held a mosaic above their heads in red and white. It spelt the truth. For six minutes, precisely the length of time played at Hillsborough before the match was abandoned, the Kop chanted 'Justice for the 96'.

Jenni Hicks, whose two teenage daughters Sarah and Victoria died, regrets that 'after all that has been established it is that one deceitful article in the Sun that's remembered – that's the myth that's believed.'

It is a myth that was supported by South Yorkshire Police. It is clear that major questions remain about the adequacy of the investigations and inquiries and the accountability of the police at the highest level. On the day of the tragedy, officers were instructed not to make entries in pocketbooks but submit handwritten 'recollections' to a team of senior officers. Working with police solicitors, the team administered a process of 'review and alteration'. Officers were taken for a drink by a chief superintendent who said, 'Unless we get our heads together and straighten this out, there are heads going to roll.' The transformation of officers' recollections into evidential statements, with sentences and passages significantly changed, was known and accepted by the West Midlands Police investigators, the coroner, Lord Justice Taylor and the Home Office.

Experiencing a disaster on the scale of Hillsborough, through bereavement or survival or both, generates mixed, deeply felt emotions of loss, anger, guilt, failure, inadequacy.

Coping should not be confused with recovering. Doreen Jones, 'just a mum who tried desperately to get some kind of justice for Rick and Trace and all the victims of Hillsborough', has 'no desire to be seen as a sad or angry person… I get on with my life'. But 'how are you supposed to feel when it all gets raked up? I have a smouldering anger, we all have it, you only have to scratch the surface and I erupt. It shouldn't be like this, I should be able to mourn.'

As Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James died, states, 'They took away our children and they took away our grandchildren, what they would have become… you can't stop that hurt or that anger.'

Dolores Steele feels that the loss of her 15-year-old son Philip is a constant. Yet 'you learn to live a different life',accommodating but not recovering from grief. She states, 'The authorities all thought we were after money, big claims, but all we wanted was the truth and for someone to say, "We made a terrible mistake, 96 died and we are sorry." And it never came.'

Peter Joynes considers that families are 'pushed towards "getting over it" or "building a new life" while we have been through the pain barrier so many times and we continually hope that one day someone will stand up and admit their mistakes.'

Sue Roberts, whose 24-year-old brother Graham died, also emphasises lack of acknowledgement and its consequences for families: 'Personally, I'm just upset that so many parents and other family members are passing away without ever having had an apology or any other form of justice. The names of our loved ones remain tarnished, with some members of the public still believing it was other fans that caused their deaths. The insight we've had over the past 20 years into the cover-ups that have gone on is appalling and still needs addressing. They say time heals… but in our case, it hasn't.'